Dutch Drug Policy Gains Ground : Narcotics: Long viewed as mecca for users, Netherlands’ approach is getting a closer look from other countries.

For years, the Netherlands was viewed abroad as a mecca for hashish and heroin users, but Dutch officialdom now says its approach to drug abuse is gaining some ground in other countries.

The country has far fewer drug-related AIDS cases than other European countries and signs are that young people are steering away from the drug scene.

“Our approach of helping even addicts who don’t want to kick the habit was scorned,” said Eddy Engelsman, head of the Health Ministry’s drug, alcohol and tobacco department. “We were entirely alone.”

The Dutch now say that other nations are beginning to accept their view that it is better to successfully contain drug abuse than to try to stamp it out completely.

The Dutch policy of allowing open sales of hashish and marijuana came under fire in other countries as examples of free-for-all permissiveness and admitting defeat in the war on drugs.

The so-called “soft drugs” are readily available at hundreds of coffee shops throughout the Netherlands.

The possession of up to 30 grams (1.2 ounces) is a misdemeanor punishable by a 250-guilder ($138) fine, but the law is rarely, if ever, enforced. And while possession of “hard drugs” remains a crime punishable by a 12-year prison sentence, heroin and cocaine dealers do business out in the open in some parts of Amsterdam.

But the nation has little drug-related violence and none of the gang warfare that has accompanied the illicit drug traffic elsewhere.

Dutch health authorities were among the first in Europe to experiment with free methadone handouts and hypodermic needles for heroin addicts, arguing that drug users should be seen as patients and not as criminals.

“The point isn’t getting them to kick the habit, but to get them to see a doctor daily,” Engelsman said in an interview. “If you push them underground . . . that’s how they end up on the margins of society.”

Officials maintain that those programs, by discouraging the re-use of needles by addicts, have helped keep AIDS at much lower levels here than elsewhere in Europe.

As of Dec. 1, only 7% of the 1,044 Dutch people with AIDS were known intravenous drug users, contrasted with 25% in most European countries, Engelsman said.

The average age of Amsterdam’s estimated 7,000 heroin addicts has been rising steadily in recent years, a sign that relatively few young people are beginning the heroin habit, he added.

The Dutch stance of acceptance and containment derives at least in part from the societal view that personal practices should be beyond legal sanctions, so long as they don’t affect others.

At the other extreme, U.S. drug policy coordinator William J. Bennett adamantly opposes any move toward decriminalization, which he has called “stupid and morally atrocious.”

West Germany has expressed concern that the opening of borders of the nations of the European Economic Community in 1992 will lead to a flood of drugs from the Netherlands and put strong pressure on the Dutch government to tighten up its drug laws.

But in July, the city of Hamburg in West Germany announced that it would propose a nationwide law opening the way for free heroin handouts under strictly controlled circumstances.

Hamburg City Hall spokesman Henning Fock said in a telephone interview that the plan was based in part on Dutch experiences with the distribution of methadone, a heroin substitute.

“The Netherlands is regarded with envy,” he said. “The Dutch are certainly very advanced in the way they’re prepared to discuss drug taboos.” Although the Hamburg plan was later trimmed to include only an extension of existing methadone programs, Engelsman noted that it was bolder than anything ever proposed in the Netherlands, where similar free heroin plans have rarely gone beyond the thinking stage.

In January, a report by the U.S. Embassy in The Hague noted that Dutch policy “is often mistranslated and misinterpreted as ‘indulgent’ or ‘permissive.’ In fact, in this society it operates as a powerful social control.”

The report concluded, “Certain of the mechanics such as low-threshold therapy, mobile treatment units and needle exchange might well be adaptable to the American reality.”

Drug policy in many nations “is getting far more pragmatic . . . that’s the pressure we’ve been exerting,” said Engelsman.

That was shown in recent Dutch negotiations with West Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg over a plan to open borders among the five nations even before the European single market in 1992.

The plan, known as the Schengen agreement, has been shelved until later this year because of the sudden crumbling of the Iron Curtain between the two Germanys.

However, Dutch negotiators secured guarantees from the four other nations that the Netherlands will be able to pursue its own drug policy so long as it takes measures to prevent the liberal Dutch climate from attracting large numbers of foreign drug users.

“If there are any coffee bars that only sell (hashish or marijuana) to West German youngsters, we’ll have to do something about that,” Engelsman said.

“Meanwhile, our biggest priority remains detecting imports and exports, and there’ve been no complaints about that at all,” he said.

“We don’t want a ‘war on drugs.’ We don’t like that terminology because we’re convinced it doesn’t work.”